New Delhi: The government won't antagonize states by going ahead with the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) but the project has not been shelved, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said on Wednesday.

"It is a federal structure. If they (states) don't want it, so be it," Shinde said when asked about progress on the proposed anti-terror agency.

"We tried to push it through. We deleted the operational details after the states objected to it. There should not have been any problems but the Chief Ministers still opposed it," he said.

On June 5, both the opposition and Congress Chief Ministers had expressed strong reservations over the NCTC saying “it violated the principles of federal structure”.